“I was taken away from my small toys, taken out of my school forcibly and delivered to my husband whom I had only seen once."

In 2012, of about 17,000 marriages were registered in the courts of the Gaza Strip, 35% were cases in which the brides were under 17 years old. These marriages are concluded without the courts knowing the girls’ real ages. Meanwhile, about 2,700 divorce cases were registered in the same year, and in 25% of these the wives were underage, Bakr Azzam, a lawyer specializing in Sharia issues, told Al-Monitor.

So a higher percentage of underage girls get married than divorced in Gaza. Somehow I don't think it's marital bliss that's responsible for that statistic.

Mariam explained that due to her young age she wasn’t capable of meeting the demands of married life.

“I was taken away from my small toys, taken out of my school forcibly and delivered to my husband whom I had only seen once, in front of the judge who officiated my marriage contract,” she added.

And her "married life" went swimmingly.

Mariam recently ran away from her husband’s house and returned to her father's, after concluding that she could not bear to stay with her husband. He dates other women under the excuse that his wife is young and thinks like a child, not living up to the intellect of a man of his age. Mariam’s husband also beats her whenever they have an argument.

“When I told my father about this, he told me, ‘This is normal and most young people are facing such a situation these days’"